When I made the wish, I just wanted a do-over. Another chance to make things right. I never, in a million years, thought it might actually come true…

Sixteen-year-old Ellison Sparks is having a serious case of the Mondays. She gets a ticket for running a red light, she manages to take the world’s worst school picture, she bombs softball try-outs and her class election speech (note to self: never trust a cheerleader when she swears there are no nuts in her bake-sale banana bread), and to top it all off, Tristan, her gorgeous rocker boyfriend suddenly dumps her. For no good reason!

As far as Mondays go, it doesn’t get much worse than this. And Ellie is positive that if she could just do it all over again, she would get it right. So when she wakes up the next morning to find she’s reliving the exact same day, she knows what she has to do: stop her boyfriend from breaking up with her. But it seems no matter how many do-overs she gets or how hard Ellie tries to repair her relationship, Tristan always seems bent set on ending it. Will Ellie ever figure out how to fix this broken day? Or will she be stuck in this nightmare of a Monday forever?

From the author 52 Reasons to Hate My Father and The Unremembered trilogy comes a hilarious and heartwarming story about second (and third and fourth and fifth) chances. Because sometimes it takes a whole week of Mondays to figure out what you really want.

So admittedly, my mood has spiked recently with the promise of romance. Yes, even dating fictional characters sometimes is not enough because they just can’t reciprocate. Tough, but that’s life. Any who, because of such I have found contemporary romance and new adult romance much more relevant and fascinating. What I liked about A Week Of Mondays was the realisation that the love we feel comfortable with may not always be our truest, or our most deepest. It may not even be who we are destined to be with, despite feeling so right at the time, Now romances are always heart-warming little trinkets, unless the author decides to rip your heart into shreds and watch you suffer (John Green and Gayle Forman, I’m talking about about you here.) Jessica Brody does not unload such pain on you, and instead re instils your faith in finding Mr Right.

Yet it must be said that for the first thirty-percent of the book, I was debating placing this on my ‘did-not-finish’ pile. The story starts up slow and steady, and lacks an allure that readers like myself (who enjoy gripping thrills) may desire. That being mentioned, I really did consider deleting the book from my library. While Jessica Brody does have a very good tone with this story, making it relatable and realistic, she did seem to struggle with the pacing. In personal judgement, I felt the story was taking to long to set the scene, let alone build up or climax. While this was a vital staging, other readers may lack the patience or understanding to prevent themselves from leaving the book. (Look at me talking about patience. Lol.) Still, despite this, the book was an incredibly fast read. After taking just short of two hours to read, I must admit that I am impressed.

Jessica Brody captures the heart and the nature of Ellie through her tone and characterisation. Ellie is clever and a very much a little bit of all of us. Yes, she thinks her family is cringey. Yes, she struggles to fit in. Yes, she is a people pleaser. Yet the fact that she acknowledges her labels and pretty much owns them makes her a favourite. Her panic, her understanding, her courage and her sheer determination to not give up plants her as a winner in my mind. Brody does well in most of her characterisation, which must be given a massive heads up. Owen, the nerdy bestfriend, is a character I would replicate and bring into reality. He was such a cute, three-dimensional character with realistic thought and emotion. Brody also managed to hit the nail on the head while capturing the stereotypical mean girl and tephe rock star boyfriend.

If I’m holding my hands up, then I must admit that I selected this book at random from my Kindle shelf. The cover was pretty fabulous, but from the title, I was expecting a Groundhog Day meets Lauren Oliver’s “Before I Fall”. And that was pretty much what I got. In comparison, A Week of Mondays is a less darker, less dangerous version of A Week of Mondays. While the topic is different, the idea of repeating one day is not and almost put me off the book altogether. But as the story came to a close and all the loose ends were tied up, I found the ending strangely satisfying. While I will struggle to award the book anything higher than a four, I have high expectations for Brody’s next book.